Each night before bed and each morning upon waking, sophomore Marilyn Schoenle looks out her west-facing Mauck Residence window upon the sun setting over a lake, despite having four white walls and a single south-facing window.
For the first time in recent memory and with permission from the dean’s office, Schoenle painted a mural on her internal wall upon coming back to campus for fall semester 2013.
The mural itself is approximately four feet by four feet. It is a window painted with acrylic paints depicting the sun setting over a lake, with silhouettes of trees and the reflections of the colors on the water.
“Over the summer, I found out I was in Mauck and thought, ‘I can paint the walls in Mauck, but can I paint a mural?”’ Schoenle said. “There is no house mom in Mauck, so I went to the dean of women and set up some specifications.”
Schoenle said that as long as she kept the dean’s office informed about the details of her mural they were extremely accommodating, even so flexible as to allow her to change it from the original blue sky to the sunset she decided upon at the last minute.
“I love her work,” senior Katie Chandler, one of the hallmates who helped her paint, said. “She’s done a really good job and her color choices are just beautiful, and it was a really clever idea to paint another window into her room.”
Knowing from her prior mural painting experience that if she waited for the semester to begin the mural might never be complete, Schoenle set about the mural on her first day back, entering into a marathon painting session.
“I started the mural at about 8 a.m. and went until about 5 p.m. It was a long day, but it was alright!” Schoenle said. “I had music, I watched a movie, and I had company stopping by to admire and chat. When I first started, I had forgotten what mural painting is like.”
Though she did the bulk of the painting herself, Schoenle had help from several of her hallmates in the techniques and such, including Chandler, sophomores Tricia Clarey, Madison Kearney, and Rhianna Dilworth.
“I took a mural class in high school, but Katie Chandler showed me how to do the foliage for the trees, and Tricia Clarey showed me how to get the effect of the sunset,” Schoenle said.
The actual painting is based on a picture Schoenle found on the internet, while the idea of the sunset comes from the window of her freshman year dorm room in McIntyre Residence, and the perfect spot on her wall facing to the west.
“I love Hillsdale for this sort of thing,” Schoenle said. “I can’t take art classes because of my labs for biology and chemistry, but there are bio majors who are art majors, too, and can do both.”
